With fair-trade coffee and organic fruit now standard on grocery shelves, consumers concerned with working conditions, environmental issues and outsourcing are increasingly demanding similar accountability for their T-shirts. The issue has been brought to the forefront by the garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed more than 800 people.

And some retailers are doing what was once unthinkable, handing over information about exactly how, and where, their products were made.

Everlane, an online boutique, last week added paragraphs to its Web site describing the factories where its products are made.

Nordstrom says it is considering adding information about clothes produced in humane working conditions.

An online boutique breaks down the number of workers involved in making each item and the cost of every component, while a textiles company intends to trumpet the fair-trade origins of its robes when Bed Bath & Beyond starts selling them this month.

And a group of major retailers and apparel companies, including some — like Nike and Walmart — with a history of controversial manufacturing practices overseas, says it is developing an index that will include labor, social and environmental measures.

New research indicates a growing consumer demand for information about how and where goods are produced. A study last year by professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard showed that some consumers — even those who were focused on discount prices — were not only willing to pay more, but actually did pay more, for clothes that carried signs about fair-labor practices.

“There’s real demand for sweat-free products,” said Ian Robinson, a lecturer and research scientist at the University of Michigan who studies labor issues. Consumers “don’t have the information they need, and they do care.”

The garment factory collapse that killed more than 800 workers in Bangladesh last month has added urgency to the movement, as retailers have seen queries stream in from worried customers.

“In the clothing industry, everybody wears it every day, but we have no idea where it comes from,” said Michael Preysman, Everlane’s chief executive and founder. “People are starting to slowly clue in to this notion of where products are made.”

Major retailers have long balked at disclosing the full trail, saying that sourcing is inherently complex — a sweater made in Italy may have thread, wool and dye from elsewhere. Another reason: Workplace protections are expensive, and cheap clothes, no matter where or how they are manufactured, still sell, as H&M, Zara and Joe Fresh show through their rapid expansion.

But labor advocates note that consumers’ appetite for more information may put competitive pressure on retailers who are less than forthcoming. In recent weeks, government officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and labor and consumer advocates have cited the Bangladesh collapse in calling for the adoption of fair-trade standards or labeling. In direct response to what happened in Bangladesh, Everlane added information to its Web site about the factories where its clothing is made. “This factory is located 10 minutes from our L.A. office,” one description for a T-shirt reads . “Mr. Kim, the owner, has been in the L.A. garment business for over 30 years.”

Everlane says it will soon add cost breakdowns for all of its clothing, along with photographs of factories where that clothing is made and information about the production.

Mr. Preysman says Everlane has long received questions from customers “around where the products are sourced from and how we can tell that the labor is good.” It is an inexact science, he said. But he added that he looks for factories certified by independent outside organizations and has executives spend time with a factory’s owner to see if he or she “is a decent human being.”

Honest By, a high-fashion site introduced last year, includes even more specific information about its products. Take a cotton shirt that costs about $320: it took 33 minutes to cut, 145 minutes to assemble and 10 minutes to iron at a Belgian factory, then the trim took an additional 10 minutes at a Slovenian plant. The safety pin cost 4 cents, and transportation about $10.50.

Bruno Pieters, the site’s founder, said by e-mail that “as long as we keep paying companies to be unsustainable and unethical, they will be.” But, he said, that may be changing. He cited a spike in sales that he asserted was in response to issues raised by recent overseas sourcing disasters.

Lush Cosmetics, a company based in Britain, has added video from its factories and photographs from buying trips to places like Kenya and Ghana to its Facebook page. Simon Constantine, head perfumer and ethical buyer, said he would like to add links to the factories Lush buys from, to encourage other cosmetics companies to support them.

Nordstrom said it had provided factory information in response to shoppers’ calls, and was considering going a step further, said Tara Darrow, a spokeswoman. The Nordstrom Web site specifies eco-friendly products, “so how can we do the same with people-friendly?” Ms. Darrow asked. “Hearing from customers and knowing they care definitely compels us to want to do more.”

A variety of groups are working on new apparel industry labor standards.

The Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which includes big names like Nike, Walmart, Gap, J. C. Penney and Target, has been testing an index called the Higg Index. It started last year with environmental goals, but the new version due this fall will include social and labor measurements.

The coalition was formed in 2011 to create one industry standard for sustainability and labor practices, rather than a patchwork approach. Some of the companies supporting this index have had sourcing problems — Walmart subcontractors were using the Tazreen factory, the Bangladesh plant where a fire killed 112 workers last November. Gap, Target and Penney produced clothing at another Bangladesh factory, where a fire killed about 30 workers in 2010. Nike, which faced a global boycott over sweatshop conditions in its overseas factories, was among the first major apparel companies pressured to disclose the factories it uses.

For now, the index is just for companies’ internal use. But Jason Kibbey, executive director of the coalition, said the goal was to give the information to shoppers, too, through a label or via the Web or apps. Labor advocates like Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, however, say that self-regulation may be ineffective.

Another certification, Fair Trade USA, began in coffee and only recently moved into apparel. PrAna, a yoga company that is among the first American apparel firms to be fair-trade certified, said the process included tours of its cut-and-sew plant in Liberia and other factories, a review of factory books and systems, and an assessment of workers’ pay relative to local salaries. PrAna sold one fair-trade T-shirt in 2011, and now sells nine such products.

Those products are priced 10 percent more than a comparable item, said its chief executive, Scott Kerslake, and they have been selling well, but PrAna has to be careful not to “completely chase away consumers on it” given the more expensive process. Now, it is trying to do more to alert consumers to the certification: the logo is only on PrAna’s tags, but it plans to put the certification logo on garments.

For some shoppers, the fair-trade pitch goes only so far. Marci Zaroff, founder of Under the Canopy, which is introducing a fair-trade certified bathrobe at Bed Bath & Beyond this month, said it could be hard to convey the message, and “that’s why we sell on style, quality and price.”

Neeru Paharia, an assistant professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown, recently completed a study on consumers’ attitudes toward sweatshop labor. She found that the complex supply chain in retailing made it easier for consumers to justify poor labor practices.

“Most people probably would not hire a child, lock them in their basement, and have them make their clothes,” she said, “but this system is so abstracted.”

She also found that consumers were concerned with labor practices — as long as they were not that interested in buying a product like shoes. But “if the shoes are cute — if they like the shoes — they actually think sweatshop labor is less wrong,” she said.

The collapse in Bangladesh may be changing that. One look at the Facebook site of Joe Fresh, which produced clothing at that factory, suggests that customers are upset, and Joe Fresh’s parent, Loblaw Companies, has vowed to audit factories more aggressively and compensate the victims’ families. Shoppers like Lauri Langton, 62, of Seattle, plan to push retailers for more information. “You should be able to tell, right away, where the product is produced, so that you can walk away from the product and not buy it if you do not believe it was produced in a humane way,” she said. “That’s where we have power as consumers.”

Sometimes, buying American-made can be more expensive. After all, labor costs are higher in the United States than in China. But Rod held up an Annin flag and showed the quality. The materials were heavier. He believes the flag is worth the value.

“It’s hard to find an American-made flag,” he said.

The store is a place where you can find items of all kinds — including patriotic gear such as American flags, prisoner of war “Never Forgotten” wall hangings, fierce-looking eagles stitched on clothing, organic soap and raw honey.

Appealing to the camo-wearing biker daddy with some stuff for the earth goddess and people in between, Rod and Susan Mathis named their store for the obvious demographic: Shoppers who want to buy goods made in the United States.

“People are unemployed,” Mathis said. “Yet we’re buying stuff made in China.”

It’s not easy to find products made in the United States anymore. It’s even harder to stock a 900-square-foot retail space with solely U.S.-made goods, Mathis said.

Shoppers who want to support local businesses will find baskets and silvery jewelry made in Upton, wall art made in Moorcroft and Cheyenne, coffee tables from Hulett, soaps and lip balms from Douglas, tissue-box holders made in Gillette.

Five percent of the store’s profits will go in an account to assist wounded veterans, Rod said.

Military veterans receive a 10 percent discount at the store.

Recently, when the Star-Tribune visited the store, no one stopped by. But business is “good when they can find us,” Rod Mathis said. They’re located in a building at 203 Carey Ave., Suite 3, where Rod, who also owns Gillette-based D&P Electric, did electrical work in exchange for three months of free rent.

“We’re not quite six months into it,” he said. “It’s an experiment still.”

But many companies are stepping gingerly, avoiding sweeping claims and spelling out what “Made in the U.S.A.” means for their products. Consumers are more shrewd about how few consumer goods actually are made in the United States, leaving companies less wiggle room about the origin of products.

The Whirlpool Corporation, for example, specified in full-page print advertisements this year that 80 percent of its appliances “sold in the U.S. come from our U.S. factories.” Despite its deep American roots, the 101-year-old company — which makes Maytag, Amana, KitchenAid and Jenn-Air products — has, like other corporate giants, moved some manufacturing abroad.

As a result of its centennial celebrations last year, some consumers have urged the company to talk more about its American origins, said William Beck, a senior marketing director at Whirlpool, which spent $57.4 million in 2011 on advertising, according to Kantar Media, a WPP unit.

In recent months, the appliance giant has been underlining its American factories, and noting in its overall brand advertising that it employs about 22,000 workers (15,000 of them at its manufacturing plants), and spends $7.4 billion annually on operating and maintaining its factories in Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

But Whirlpool, whose ad drew a full-page rebuttal from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers accusing it of shutting factories in the United States, said nostalgia and similar sentiments do not drive its sales. “Whirlpool’s key differentiating points are quality and innovation,” said Mr. Beck, and “the icing is that, hey, we’re made in the United States.”

Whirlpool does not share its market research, but other market studies show that customers increasingly take note of where a product is made. Perception Research Services International, in a September study, found that four out of five shoppers notice a “Made in the U.S.A.” label on packaging, and 76 percent of them said they would be more likely to buy a product because of the label.

While shoppers, especially those over 35, say they want to help the economy by buying United States-made goods, “the motivating factors actually may be quality and safety,” said Jonathan Asher, executive vice president of Perception Research Services. The company, which is based in Teaneck, N.J., surveyed 1,400 consumers last summer. “People are paying attention in categories that are ingested like food, medicine and personal care products, but less so in electronics, office supplies and appliances,” he said.

In a separate study, the Boston Consulting Group found that 80 percent of consumers surveyed said they would be willing to pay more for “Made in the U.S.A.” products than for those carrying a “Made in China” label.

They would pay the biggest differential for items like baby food and wooden toys, and a smaller percentage for electronics, apparel and appliances, said Kate Manfred, director of the group’s Center for Consumer and Customer Insight in the Americas, which released the study in mid-November.

“Safety and quality, and keeping jobs in America, are the important factors,” she said.

Bixbi, a Boulder, Colo., pet treat provider, has relied on safety to increase sales. The company, which started in 2008 amid revelations of tainted dog food ingredients imported from overseas, sells dog treats made from locally raised chickens and other animals.

“Our sales have grown 600 percent each year,” said James Crouch, who founded the small company with his brother, Michael. “Locally sourced is a key advantage.”

But for all the talk about American-made goods, Bixbi is one of the few clients that have adopted “Made in the U.S.A.” marketing, said Dave Schiff, co-founder of Made Movement, a Boulder advertising firm that handles the Bixbi account.

“Some customers think that the American-made label may just be window dressing and companies can be reluctant to use it,” Mr. Schiff said. He and two colleagues started their firm in April to enlist client companies that manufacture in the United States.

Classifying goods as American-made can be dicey, he discovered, because many products have parts that are made outside the United States. To generate interest in such products, as well as a revenue stream, his firm in July started a Made Collection Web site to sell American-made goods.

But finding goods manufactured in the United States for the Web site has been a challenge, Mr. Schiff said. Many items on the Web site are expensive, like a $225 dress shirt from Hamilton, the Houston company that makes Made in America apparel that competes with brands like Levi’s Vintage Clothing and Orvis, which also capitalize on manufacturing in the United States.

Companies are keenly aware that highlighting American-made credentials can backfire after the experience of the apparel maker Ralph Lauren. Renowned for its American nostalgia, Lauren provided uniforms for the 2012 United States Olympic team that were made in China. That resulted in threats of a boycott by some angry consumers.

Some companies like Exxel Outdoors, which makes camping, hunting and fishing equipment, have considered, then rejected, marketing their American-made credentials. Exxel makes two million sleeping bags annually at its Haleyville, Ala., factory.

“We do manufacture in the United States, but there are a lot of variables, like where the components are made. Some of ours come from abroad, so it could be confusing,” Harry Kazazian, the company’s chief executive, explained.

“Simply using the Made in the U.S.A. label is not enough,” said Jaynie L. Smith, chief executive of Smart Advantage, a consulting firm based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

“Companies can be foreign owned,” said Ms. Smith, who wrote “Relevant Selling,” a book about corporate sales strategy. “But they need to say that ‘We are still on your soil. We create jobs. We make quality products, and we’re delivering them quickly.’ ”